In previous posts we’ve looked at the two biggest mistakes I see businesses making when it comes to paying for lead generation.

Mistake #1 is that they have no follow up process in place.

Mistake #2 is that they have no clear Call To Action (CTA) – or no Call To Action at all.

In this video I’m going to walk you through the third biggest mistake businesses make when paying for leads:

Mistake number three is not having tracking on those leads.

So it's all very well and good so far… these leads come into your business and they go into the campaign and there's some follow up emails, there might be some SMSs. (There are going to be some SMSs, I can tell you that right now. We'll come to that in a little while.) There's going to be emails and SMSs, and there’s stuff going out.

The leads are sitting in this campaign and all of a sudden do we really know what's happened to them?

Some people book in for a sales call, some people do a quote request, but what happens to all of the others? And all of a sudden, I don’t know where they are. I don’t know what's going on with them. They've gone into this list but I don't really know what to do with them. I don’t know where to find them… nothing happens… not many sales come out it.

Anyone felt like that before?

So I want you to picture this…

When someone registers, they go into a list and they start getting the emails and they start getting some follow in there. They start going into this campaign where we built this trust and we get them to take the action that we want them to take.

And then we always collect telephone numbers. You'll see why here for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm in the business of automation and I want to be sending them SMS as a first point of call.

Second, I'm in the business of automation and basically I get a lot of tyre kickers when I get opt-ins. So I make them give me their telephone number. If they register for a webinar, if they register for a lead magnet, if they register for anything, I make them give me their telephone number because those people that don't are less qualified than those people that do.

My cost of lead goes up much higher, but I get better conversions from the leads that come in because I have their telephone number.

Now, this is the important thing. When they engage in content – they click to download or they click on one of the videos – when they engage, I put them into what's called a sales pipeline. They’re pre-qualified, okay?

So these people have engaged in some of my content. I have that automatic follow up if they engage, but then this is the next step. They go into the sales pipeline pre-qualified. I make sure I have their telephone number – that’s super, super important. (That'll make sense in a moment.)

For those people that book in, the most qualified people booking go into “qualified” in the sales pipeline. (I’ll show you what I mean in a moment, it's all very visual.) And I get to make those calls first because they're the people that have identified, “Yes. I want this. I want to get onto a sales call with you.”

Then I call the pre-qualified people. That makes a little bit of sense, doesn't it?

So let's have a look at this example:

So once someone has downloaded the book and they've clicked on one of my videos, we automatically put them into pre-qualified. So that's the first section in the image above.

Then when someone's booked in for a sales call, we automatically then put them into our sales pipeline. They automatically go into the qualified and booked section. These are people that are in there and we can see at a glance exactly how many people have gone through the process and self qualified themselves.

And when we're on the sales call, we’re talking to the person and they're potentially going to be a customer, we put them into this converting phase and then we put a value in there.

Then I can see in the pipeline, all of a sudden, the potential earnings from this lead generation campaign that we've got going on.

So then when you've made all of those calls and you've put them into Converting or Won or Lost, what do we do?

Do we sit back and think, “Oh, this lead generation campaign's not really doing much. We've only got two calls booked. What am I going to do next? Am I just going to leave the other leads just sitting in there?”

No, absolutely not, because they're pre-qualified because we've collected telephone number.

What do you think we're going to do these pre-qualified people over here? We are going to get on the phone and we're going to try and either qualify those people, get them to book in a sales call, or have a sales call with them on the phone straight away.

Does that make sense? In actual fact, does it make sense not to be doing this?

You 100% can't afford to not do this in your business and just let the rest of those leads go.

And these calls don't necessarily have to be a direct sales call. It could be like, “Hey, I noticed you downloaded blah, blah. What do you think of it? What problems are you having that you need to know about doing such-and-such better in your business?”

It becomes an interactive kind of process where we are not necessarily selling to them, but we are finding out what the problems are so we can provide them with solutions there.

Can you afford not to be doing this in your business?

I don't think so.

We have to think about what we can do to make our business stand out more than everybody else's. We have to think about “What can I do with these leads that I'm paying for to come into my business, to get the most out of them?”

And this is just one technique that we can use to make sure we are making the most out of them. Don't sit back and wait for it to happen, be proactive and make this happen.

In a recent post I shared with you the biggest mistake that I see small business owners making when it comes to paying for lead generation. There’s also another major mistake that many small business owners are making over and over again and it’s costing them a fortune in lost revenue from their lead generation.

Here’s a quick video for you where I explain what this second biggest mistake is and how to fix it:

Mistake number one was no follow up. And mistake number two is no clear call to action.

The second biggest mistake I see people make is no clear call to action.

What is the focus of your campaign?

Why are we paying for leads?

Why are we getting people to opt in?

So we've got to know what is our ultimate goal?

What do we want people to do at the end of this?

And it's not just get into our database so we can become customers and become related to them because that's not going to happen.

We’ve got to have an ultimate goal… and we have to know what that ultimate goal is.

Is it to book in a sales call?

Is it to register for your webinar?

Is it to buy your product?

Whatever it is, you've got to know what it is and you’ve got to know exactly what that process is.

Now in my campaign, I do it a little bit trickier. All you need to worry about is having one clear call to action in your campaigns to start with.

But for me, my sales process is on a webinar, but when someone opts in for my e-book and they're engaging with every single item of content that I've got in that campaign, then they're qualified. And so because they’re qualified, I want them to go in and book in for a call straight away.

Ultimately, my goal here is for them to book in for a call and that's what the webinar does. The webinar gets them to book into a call.

So if they've engaged with everything I want them to book in for a strategy session and that's ultimately the goal. But if they don't engage in all of my content, they're not qualified enough yet.

They've got to go and do my webinar training first.

And so the other call to action, if they don't engage in all of that content, is that we to get them to come along to the webinar.

So where should we have our call to action in the campaign?

Now, as you can probably tell, I'm going to have a few more details here, but where should we have our call to action?

Where do you think the key times and places in a campaign from (referring back to our mistake #1 video) when someone opts in to when they get their welcome email to when they get the three trust building emails to when they get the three conversion emails at the end… where do you think we should have our call to action?

Where should we be telling them about the next step?

Just the conversion phase? No.

So on our thank you page:

People are about 67% more likely to take the next step when we are giving them exactly what they've signed up for… 67% more likely to go and take the next course of action, as soon as they've got what they wanted, even if they haven't engaged in it yet.

So on your thank you page, if you do not have your call to action there to take the next, then you are doing yourself a disservice.

On the video pages:

Remember the trust building phase? If you remember to where I showed you the screenshots of Pauline's pages with the videos, on every single one of them is a button to go and take the next step. We don't do a hard sell on it. We don't say anything about it in the videos we just give content and the button sits there. So people can self-select in that trust building phase.

In the conversion phase of the email:

In the conversion phase of the email we are very, very direct. “This is the course of action we want you to take…” Once we've built the trust, we want them to come along and take the action, whatever it might be – get the quote, book in for a sales call… get along to our webinar – whatever it is.

But we drive here. We literally tell them to go and take that action. We can be super specific in the conversion phase. We don't need to beat around the bush. We don't need to be polite. What we need to do is tell them to take the course of action and give them a reason why.

Those that engage we can have one conversation with. Those that don't engage we can have another conversation with, and potentially we might even introduce some other marketing processes for those that don't engage with our emails as well.

There are some common mistakes that I see over and over again from small businesses when they’re paying for leads. In the video below I explain what the most common mistake is and how it’s costing many small businesses literally thousands in wasted advertising dollars.

Watch this video now for a quick run-down on what this mistake is… and how to fix it:

The huge mistake – and this is the biggest one I see people making – is that they do literally no follow up at all.

So, you have an opt-in campaign or a lead generation campaign. This is when someone gives us their name and their email address, and I'm going to suggest to you that you ask for their telephone number too. Now, every single time we ask for their name, phone number and email address and they give us those in exchange for us giving them something of value. It might be:

• a free report
• an eBook
• a template
• a calculation spreadsheet

Whatever we’re offering them, we give it to them to help them make their life a little bit easier and so that we can then market to them or continue to communicate with them.

So the biggest mistake I see people make is they do NO follow up.

They have an opt in, and then they have one email that goes out and delivers the eBook or one email that delivers whatever the freebie is that you're giving away… the carrot, if you like. And then they do nothing. They literally do nothing.

So what happens here is nothing, in most cases.

We have people opt in, we grow our database and we send a newsletter and we don't get any value out of these whatsoever. In actual fact, they come in and they literally drop off the face of this earth. So it just falls off the cliff, so to speak, which is what is happening to these leads every time we get them to opt-in and we don't nurture them and we don't follow up with them.

Just sending one email is mistake number one.

There are three specific phases in the follow up that I want you to implement every single time you get someone's name and email address, okay?

Every time… even if it be someone opting-in just to go onto your newsletter, we don't just send them the newsletter. They want a piece of you, and we're going to give it to them.

The first phase is action.

The second phase is trust.

And third phase is conversion.

Three specific phases. I'll go through each of them with you, but there are three phases.

Phase One: Action

We're literally going to reward people for taking the action that we want them to take when they give us their name and their email address. And we're going to give them exactly what they signed up for. That's our action based follow up to start with.

Phase Two: Trust

And then we want people to know us and to like us and to trust us, don't we? So we want them to do that. That's our ultimate goal here.

So they're going to become a customer, potentially. Eventually.

Do you think we're going to get their trust just from sending them one email? Absolutely not.

We want to break down our eBook into three equal parts. Let me go through this.

So the trust phase, what we want to do is we want to earn more trust. So we're going to give them more than what they signed up for. Write this down…

We're going to give them more than what they signed up for.

But kind of the same stuff of what they signed up for, if that makes sense.

Let me explain it a little bit further.

Say you give them an eBook. We're going to record some training videos about the stuff that you give them in the eBook.

Usually break an eBook into three parts. And so that's three videos and three emails that we already have there that we are going to send in our trust building phase.

So we had our action phase, which is reward them, give them one email.

And then we have our trust building phase, which is three emails at a minimum. We break down the eBook into parts and we get in front of the camera and we teach them the stuff that's in the eBook, okay? Most importantly.

We record it in videos and we send the email to get them to go and watch the video. We're going to send emails and videos just like this one.

So there's an email that goes out and then it goes through to a landing page like this one, this is Pauline Delaney here, one of my customers. And it goes through to a landing page like this one where you teach or in this case, Pauline is teaching, for three to five minutes, the stuff that's in the eBook.

And then there's little call to action down there on the, the page as well. We'll talk about that in a minute.

Then email number two is another component of the eBook. It's Pauline Delaney here, again, teaching for three to five minutes. And there's another call to action on that page.

And then the third email is another breakdown… another part of that eBook, or the final part of that eBook, that she's teaching there as well.

So not only are we giving the eBook, we are giving video training of the same content that's in the eBook.

Which means we're reinforcing that and developing more of a relationship.

Do you know, on average, how many people click through and download an eBook after they've opted in?

Only 33% of people on average download an eBook after they opt in for it.

And so about the other 70% of people, what are we going to do with them? Just let them go?

Most people will opt in for an eBook and then they think, I don't want to read this. So we're going to give it to them in another format and video is that format.

Why video?

For the voice and image interaction. We're using two senses… so we get to engage with two senses, not just one sense. And we get to spend more time with them on our site. They get to spend more time listening to us.

We get to develop a relationship with them and they get to see our eyes as we're talking to them in the video.

And that's one of the most important things. We start to be able to develop that relationship that’s a bit more personal and you see the person behind it then.

So we've had the action and then we've had the trust. Action is one email and trust is at least three emails. And then we have the conversion phase.

Phase Three: Conversion

And what do you think we're trying to do in the conversion phase? Once we have their trust, what do we want them to do?

We want to get them to do something. We want to persuade them. We want to convert them to whatever our call to action is.

And so we want to be direct here. We want to tell them exactly what we need them to do.

Is it booking a call?

Is it to get onto a webinar?

Is it to buy a product?

Whatever it is, we've got to get them to go there, to the limited offer or whatever it might be.

What Now?

If you're not already including all three of these phases in your follow up campaign, set aside time this week to set this up. (HINT: It can all be automated.)

You may be surprised by the difference it makes and the increased conversion and then income from these leads.

Did you know that many businesses are consistently losing up to 95% of their sales. And the worst thing is... they're not even aware of it. 

In this video below, Automation Made Easy's Jason Buckner shares the simple strategies you can use to prevent this costly mistake:

I find that coaching swimming is like coaching follow-up. You do the right thing in your stroke, at the right time, and you get faster and stronger.

And it’s the same thing in business… it’s the same thing in follow-up. You say the right thing, at the right time and you’re going to get more connection with those leads and better results in there as well.

In retail it takes 1-3 interactions with our customers to get a sale.

What can we do in retail that we can’t do online?

Face-to-face communication, touch and feel, develop a relationship. Personal and physical contact and that eye-to-eye contact that we can do in retail we can’t do online.

So it’s a little bit different when we go online. Online it’s actually 5-7 interactions… 5-7 interactions on average.

So we need to follow up with our customers, we need to nurture them and build a relationship with them – and this is the key thing – until THEY are ready to buy.

Most businesses try to MAKE their businesses ready to buy. But in actual fact, I think we should be following up with them until THEY are ready to buy. It’s all about Relationship Marketing.

See the process is getting the leads in, and then we need to build up the relationship with them just like we would in the retail environment. Build a relationship with them to get them to buy.

Here are some more facts you need to know:

• 99% of traffic that comes to your business is not ready to buy.
• 95% of sales occur after 7 touches or 7 interactions with those leads.
• 68% of customers leave because of indifference.

It’s not just in the lead generation process where we’ve got to continue to follow up, but it’s also in the customer nurturing process that we’ve got to follow up as well. So these principles work in both places.

The fact is, most businesses don’t follow up or don’t do it effectively, that’s the key thing. Yet more than 95% of sales are made after the follow up. In fact, that’s 95% of sales are made after 7 interactions.

95% of sales are made after 7 interactions.

So if you want more sales, what do you think you need to do?

Let me repeat that… if you want more sales, what do you think you need to do?

• More follow ups.
• More interactions.
• You need to build the relationship with them. Just like if we were in that retail environment, we need to mimic that however we can.

If you're not following up with your leads - or not following up effectively - you may well be losing up to 95% of your sales! So doesn't it make sense to get started on implementing effective follow up processes into your business today?

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about the mistakes I see business owners make when they're doing a lead generation campaign, an opt in campaign… you know, a campaign to grow the database and not necessarily having the right focus.

Now, the final mistake that I see people making quite a bit is this. They put this campaign together - people opt in and they deliver the free report or whatever the lead generation tool is that they're offering to people for free for their name and their email address… and I would suggest absolutely telephone number all the time and that will make sense in a little while why.

So they're putting together this whole campaign and have their emails together. They have their conversion phase together and their drive phase together.

But they don't really know what's happening with every single lead.

And as a result, they're just letting the emails do the work instead of actually getting in there and treating this asset, this database that's growing like their business and getting in there and being proactive about the leads that are coming in and do something with them.

Let me explain to you. Watch this video below now as I share my screen and you can see our campaign from inside Keap. This one is using Keap Max Classic, but this sort of campaign works in any of the Keap versions.

Let's take a look:

In the last video we talked about the biggest mistake I see people make when doing a lead generation campaign. And that is just having one email to deliver whatever it is that they're delivering – an eBook, free report, checklist, quiz… whatever it might be – and then doing no follow-up afterwards.

And today I want to talk about the next big mistake that I see people doing, which I share in the quick video below:

The next biggest mistake I see business owners making is when they're doing a lead generation campaign, it's just, “Oh my God, I've got to get more leads.” And that's the focus of their lead generation campaign.

It's just about this first step about getting more leads and there's no focus through the rest of the campaign. And so those people that usually do have emails going through, it's like, “Oh, let's have as many links in there as possible. And let's have as many emails in there as possible. And let's just do everything we can to try and get people to buy our product and book a call to get to our webinar, to do this and to do that.”

Their campaigns don't have any focus and thus, they don't get the returns that they need to get.

And so what I'd like you to think about when you're doing a lead generation campaign is to just have one ultimate goal. What is it that you really want people to do after they opt in for your eBook, free report, video series, or whatever it might be? What do you want them to do at the end of that?

What is the one goal? Is it booking a sales call? This is probably one of the key ones, especially if you have a high ticket offer or are in a service-based industry… absolutely book in a sales call.

The second one might be to register for your webinar. It might be buy a product. Whatever it is – it doesn't matter what it is – but whatever it is, that's got to be the focus through the entire process, okay?

What I spoke about in the last video was having one delivery email, then at the very least three content emails. So four emails there and then two more emails. And those last two emails, email five and email six at the very least, are driving them to go somewhere.

So we're going to drive them to go and to do whatever it is, whether to buy the product, whether it's to book in for a consult, whether it's to register for your webinar, but that's going to be the focus all the way through.

That's number one. You're going to have that focus all the way through.

So these are the places where you're going to have that focus:

1. Number one on the opt-in page when they opt in. So the thank you page after they opt in right there, we're going to try and convert them. That’s the first step.
2. Second step, when we deliver the product. People are most likely to take the next step when we've given them exactly what it is that they've opted in for or exactly what it is that they've purchased.
3. Then in the first email, we're going to have some drive in there or some conversion copy to get them to go and take the next step. Whatever that next step is, the focus has got to be the same all the way through the campaign so that we don't have mixed messages.
4. So on the thank you page, in the delivery email, then, remember we have three emails or potentially more emails where we're delivering some content, on the page that the lead goes to where the video is, what we're going to do there is… on that page we're going to have some conversion copy there as well.

I'm going to drive it in every single email. We're just going to have maybe a banner or some copy, ready to take the next step, booking them for a free sales strategy call, or we wouldn't call it a sales strategy call, but that's potentially what the call would be for.

So in those three places, and then in the last two emails, okay?

So:

1. On the thank-you page
2. In the welcome email where we deliver
3. On all of those pages, the bottom of the content pages underneath our videos, we're going to have some conversion there to get them to do what we want them to do.
4. Then finally, in the last two emails or the drive emails, we're going to drive them to do what we need them to do.

Don't have all of these other focuses. All the people that I see that have multiple focuses in their emails - you know, click here, do this, click here, register for this Facebook group, do this Instagram, do this, come along to this webinar, do this - all of those campaigns I see not getting the conversions as much as those where we deliver the content and have one call to action, one focus of the campaign and getting better conversions anyway.